Saturday, January 24, 2009

I'm a science moron. When someone starts talking science, I generally tune everything out and begin daydreaming of a monkey riding a unicycle while wearing a fez hat. In high school, I struggled to pass both biology and chemistry. It's ironic that my sister is a Doctor Scientist who does something science-y (I wish I could tell you, but every time she tries to explain it to me, that darn monkey rides up on his unicycle.)

So imagine my amusement when I got hired for a show with major science elements. Since my science background is so weak, I had a lot of catching up to do. Over the last month, I learned a few things:

Vague science-like facts that I pull out of my ass do not qualify as actual science, even if they sound logical. I guess you need "facts" to back it up. Personally, I prefer truthiness.

I am rusty in geometry, so it took me a while to figure out the hypotenuse of a right triangle. I did, however, figure out the radius of a circle with ease.

Despite my results, I was reminded that geometry is not science. No one on the show is interested in my geometric results.

It takes 400 milliseconds to blink your eye.

Writers on the show want to make sure that what is on TV is awesome. Scientists who work on the show want to make sure that what is on TV is accurate. Put the two together and wackiness ensues.

When a Physician and Scientist disagree on numbers, stand back, hide, and hope not to get hit by shrapnel.

When you get hit in the nuts, you feel pain in the stomach because when you're developing in the womb, the testicles begin life in the stomach and gradually drop. So the brain still thinks the testicles are there, and when pain signals get sent down to the crotch, they also go into the stomach...or something like that.

If an executive farts a lot during a meeting, don't laugh, because all it does is encourage him to continue to fart more.

That last one doesn't really have to do with science, but its an important lesson for everyone to learn.